Chances are you’re passionate about gems. Emerald’s lush, vivid green. Ruby’s fiery crimson. Pearl’s shimmering glow. Your admiration for these and other elegant gems probably attracted you to the jewelry profession. It might also have led you to enroll in Colored Stone Essentials.

The formal definition of colored stone is that it’s any gem that isn’t a diamond. But leaving it at that says far too little. A colored stone transforms nature’s allure into a single glinting object of desire. All the colors the human eye is capable of seeing—lilac, azure, magenta, saffron, teal, scarlet, and more—are captured in these timeless jewels.

For centuries, artists and poets have used the powerful images of colored stones to express love, passion, and power. At the same time, people from all walks of life have adorned themselves with the dramatic, radiant grace of colored stone jewelry.

The subtle magic of gems reveals itself in a tanzanite necklace draped around a woman’s neck or a sapphire bracelet glistening on her wrist. But magic isn’t that easy to explain, and the colored stones in your inventory rarely sell themselves by magic alone. When a customer walks into your store, you must be prepared with facts and figures to back up the magic.

How? You already hold the answer in your hands. Colored Stone Essentials offers the framework you need to sell colored stones ethically and effectively. This course provides basic, vital knowledge of colored stones for you to learn today and use on the selling floor tomorrow. Once you understand the reality behind a colored stone’s magic, you can start sharing that magic with your customers and watching your colored stone sales grow.

In the first seven assignments, this course will introduce and clearly explain a wide range of information that’s vital to your understanding of all colored stones. The last assignment will build on this information by focusing on three popular colored stones: sapphire, ruby, and emerald. You can use Assignment 8—with its specific analysis of these three gems—as a model for taking your newly acquired knowledge and applying it to other gems in your individual sales presentations.

The rest of this assignment will introduce some basic terms and concepts and help you grasp the fundamental language of colored stones. After all, the first step to feeling at ease in any new situation is to learn the basic words and phrases common to the unfamiliar environment.

You certainly don’t have to teach customers your new vocabulary, but you can share what you learn in the form of ideas. By the time you’ve completed Colored Stone Essentials, you’ll find that you can approach the vibrant world of colored stones with new confidence and that you can communicate that confidence to your customers.

To Help You Learn…

• Questions that introduce each main section are there to give you an idea of what to expect and get you thinking before you start reading. You don’t have to write them down. They’re intended as an extra learning aid for you.
• Key Concepts are brief statements in the margins that help you focus on the most important points in each assignment. They’re also listed at the end of the assignment to help you review what you’ve learned.
• Key Terms are new words or phrases that will help you understand the course material. Each term is italicized in the text. A brief definition appears in a nearby margin and also in a list at the end of the assignment.